Dynamic modelling of the socio-technical systems of household energy consumption and carbon emissions

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Abstract

There is a growing need to curtail the carbon emissions in the globe in order to
achieve the climate stabilisation goals based on the climate change threat. And as
such, different initiatives and schemes of Government have targeted a number of
policies at reducing energy and carbon emissions targets with the housing sector of
the economy not an exception. In order to explore the feasibility of achieving carbon
emissions reduction targets within the housing sector of the UK, the research views
the issue of household energy consumption and carbon emissions as complex sociotechnical
problem involving the analysis of both the social and technical variables.
This thesis therefore describes the development of the system dynamics based model
to capture and solve the problem relating to the future profiles of household energy
consumption and carbon emissions by providing a policy advice tool for use by the
policy makers.
In order to investigate the problem, the research adopts the pragmatist research
strategy involving collection of both qualitative and quantitative data to develop the
model. The developed model has six modules, which are: population/household,
dwelling internal heat, occupants’ thermal comfort, climatic-economic-energy
efficiency interaction, household energy consumption, and household CO2 emissions.
In addition to the ‘baseline’ scenario, the developed model was used to develop four
illustrative scenarios of household energy consumption and carbon emissions; which
are: ‘efficiency’ scenario, ‘behavioural change’ scenario, ‘economic’ scenario, and
‘integrated’ scenario. The ‘efficiency’ scenario generally considers the effects of
improvements in energy efficiency measures on household energy consumption and
ultimately on household carbon emissions. Additionally, the ‘behavioural change’
scenario tries to model the effects of occupants’ change of energy consumption
behaviour on household energy consumption and carbon emissions profile. The
‘economic’ scenario assumes a case of policy change by Government favouring
energy prices reduction, thereby reducing the energy bills payable by the
householders and its consequences on household energy consumption and carbon
emissions. And the ‘integrated’ scenario combines the assumptions in the first three
scenarios and then analyses its effects on household energy consumption and carbon
emissions.
The ‘baseline’ results indicate that about 49% savings in carbon emissions by the
year 2050 below the base year of 1990 are possible. Additionally, the results of the
developed model for all the illustrative scenarios indicate that carbon emissions
savings of 46%, 55%, 58%, and 63% below the base year of 1990 are possible from
the ‘economic’, ‘efficiency’, ‘behavioural change’, and ‘integrated’ scenarios
respectively.
The research concludes that it is unlikely for any of the scenarios by its own to meet
the required legally binding reductions of 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2050
unless this is vigorously pursued. The unique contribution of the research is the
development of a model that incorporates socio-technical issues that can be used for
decision making over time.